▲Research results have shown that the antibiotic neomycin can prevent severe disease and death by increasing the immune response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the influenza virus. (Photo = DB)
Research has shown that the antibiotic neomycin can prevent severe disease and death by increasing the immune response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the influenza virus.
A study published in PNAS showed that the antibiotic neomycin can prevent severe disease and death by increasing the immune response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the influenza virus.
The COVID-19 pandemic has increased awareness about the prevention and treatment of respiratory viral infections.
With the development of an effective vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, the rate of severe disease has declined since the start of the pandemic.
Antiviral drugs are currently prescribed to prevent the progression of respiratory viral infectious diseases, and monoclonal antibodies and convalescent plasma are administered for severe disease, but effective treatments for COVID-19 and other respiratory viral infections are still estimated to be lacking. I am.
Accordingly, a research team from Yale University recently reported that the application of neomycin, a cheap and widely used antibiotic, into the nasal passages of mice and hamsters, can induce a strong immune response against SARS-CoV-2 and influenza A.
Neomycin is an aminoglycoside antibiotic that is taken orally to prevent digestive infections or applied in the form of an ointment such as “Neosporin” to prevent skin infections. Neosporin ointment, in particular, contains neomycin and two other antibiotics and is used to prevent infections in small cuts and burns and to manage bacterial infections and nosebleeds.
The research team investigated whether applying neomycin ointment into the nasal passages of mice and hamsters would have an antiviral effect against SARS-CoV-2 and influenza A in the upper respiratory tract and prevent the spread of SARS-CoV -2.
They treated each nostril of the mice with 10 microliters (㎕) of neomycin solution and administered 2 milligrams (mg) of neomycin sulfate. Then, they treated the mice with neomycin and euthanized them on days 1, 3, 5, and 7 and analyzed their nasal tissue.
It could be assumed that mice treated with neomycin on day 1 had a greater immune response to the virus, considering that the expression of the interferon-stimulated gene (ISG) was increased compared to the nasal tissue of the control group that was not treated with neomycin.
Next, the research team treated genetically modified mice with neomycin and then infected them with different strains of SARS-CoV-2. Unlike the control group, which did not survive, most of the neomycin-treated mice survived without any symptoms of infection, and the nasal cells of the neomycin-treated mice showed lower viral replication than the control group.
The antiviral activity observed in neomycin-treated mice was similarly observed against influenza A infection.
Additionally, the research team administered 5 mg of neomycin intranasally to Syrian hamsters and then allowed them to coexist with hamsters that had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 24 hours earlier. After one day, only half of the hamsters treated with neomycin had any symptoms of infection. In other words, despite living with infected hamsters, the neomycin-treated hamsters were not easily infected with SARS-CoV-2.
Additionally, in a small-scale double-blind pilot study, the research team asked 12 healthy volunteers to apply Neosporin ointment into their nasal passages twice a day using a cotton ball. As a result of examining the degree of immune response on days 4, 8, and 12, the ISG response rate in the Neosporin-treated group was higher than in the control group that did not receive Neosporin.
Experts rated the research results as very convincing, demonstrating that over-the-counter neomycin ointment can prevent viral infection of the nasal mucosa by stimulating a nonspecific immune response.
They explained that it is difficult to directly transfer the results of animal experiments to humans and that a large-scale, prospective, double-blind clinical study is needed to demonstrate whether the immune response observed in volunteers applying Neosporin is effective in preventing or treat viral infections.
Meanwhile, they predicted that the idea of using antibiotics to prevent respiratory infections from leading to serious illness is worth further research.
They predicted that the use of antiviral drugs could cause rapidly mutating respiratory viruses to develop drug resistance, but that stimulation of the innate immune response via antibiotics could effectively prevent respiratory viral infections.
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